Malarkey

My attention was grabbed by Ingvar Eggert Sigurrðsson on the poster. I was fascinated by the story and I was especially interested in the fact that this film is above all an Icelandic production. But unfortunately this interest only led to me being completely disappointed with what I got – not only with Ingvar, but also with the story and the way it is told. The only thing left to appreciate in this movie are the locations, which are simply unique.

The second part of Nymphomaniac starts as boring to give you a punch in the gut at the ending. Shia LaBeouf delivers an excellent performance, and Stellan Skarsgård’s acting remains solid. All the actors are without reproach, actually. We even see more of Charlotte Gainsbourg instead of her younger self played by Stacy Martin. Charlotte makes quite an impression with her nipples, which I’ll probably never forget. You don’t get to see nipples as pert as hers in movies much, if you see them at all. What is worse, however, is that Lars von Trier continued his episodic, meaningless narration, which is boring in places, interesting in others and way too philosophical in yet other moments. And this keeps going on until the moment when Stellan convinces you of something you would be better not knowing. After these almost four hours, the ending is a blow to a soul of every feeling viewer. I’m giving this film one star because Lars filmed it quite skillfully. It can’t be denied that he’s a good director, but all the rest in this film is pure suffering.

Lars von Trier once again made me think. Not only did he make a unique biographical film, but he also crossed the boundaries with an excellent camera and a special way of narration, to which he is actually no stranger. What’s worse is the fact that he divided the story of a nymphomaniac into two long two-hour films, which have no fundamental point at all for the viewer to focus on. We just see Charlotte Gainsbourg lying on the street, beaten within an inch of her life. Stellan Skarsgård takes her under his wings, wishing to hear her story. Why was she lying beaten on the street? So Charlotte starts telling her story. Chapter 1 – a discovery that I have a pussy. Chapter 2 – a discovery how to use my pussy. And then a story starts to unfold about the nymphomaniac using others, not caring what it does to them. At the same time she starts to meet people who are even more twisted than she is. At times it’s absurd, at times it’s fun, a few shots came straight from a porn flick, but as a whole it did absolutely nothing to me. Anyhow I started watching the second part right away, because I was hoping that the story would get at least a bit depraved…

La scoumoune is full of plot twists. At first glance, it looks like a crime movie only for things to end up in jail in the second half. But it still isn’t completely over. Another strange thing here is that Belmondo keeps a straight face but at the same time does the crazy shenanigans we know him to do. I stopped taking this film seriously at the moment when he stuck a peg up one of the guards’ ass during a jail scuffle.

I wasn’t really sure what I watched. And I’m really not sure about that even now. The Guest is perhaps the strangest film of this year. At the same time, however, it immediately ranks among the craziest and quite possibly the best. That is, if I’m taking b-movies into account. The story of The Guest is a complete bullshit, even though it is trying to look serious. But it comes with plot twists so insane that even Donald Trump’s speeches cannot hold a candle to this movie. On the other hand, I have to praise Dan Stevens’s performance as absolutely incredible. He reminds me of Ryan Gosling a lot. I was also exhilarated by the soundtrack, offering the best of contemporary electronic music, which is happily returning to the 1980s. So I understand that a lot of people were reminded of Drive by this movie. It happened to me, too.

It’s been a long time since I saw such an incredibly enjoyable movie as The Hundred-Foot Journey. From a xenophobic point of view, I have to praise the creators, because everyone here was really charismatic. And especially the Indian family, who didn’t hesitate to move into the house opposite a famous restaurant to open their own establishment there. It was all incredibly relaxing. Starting with the story, through the characters and ending with the filmmaking. And I really didn’t mind that the film was 122 minutes long. I enjoyed every minute and waited for what would come next, because the Indian audacity in that one small French village had taken my breath away. What I didn’t understand was the way how the French were portrayed in this film – especially somewhere in the middle of French vineyards in a village where it is difficult not to meet a French hillbilly. But strangely enough all the people there were speaking English. A bit of a mystery, that.

I must warn you that watching this movie once is not enough. It’s the same as with the Yes, Minister series. It’s not easy to listen to all these politics talks and you must fortify yourself mentally for it, otherwise all those lines full of catchphrases will fly right over your head and you’ll feel so confused in result that you will give this movie as bad ratings as the users StarsFan or xxmartinxx did on this site. I was ready for some political satire but I still wasn’t prepared for what I got. I guess I didn’t choose the right moment to play this, which this movie would have deserved. Thierry Lhermitte was relishing his role of a politician, I have nothing to complain about here. What was worse was that even though sometimes I was laughing, at other times I was just confused. But I think that if I watch it once more I will understand more. So I’m rating this with three stars after first watching.

I’m glad that lately Americans have been making one film after another based on fantasy bestsellers for young people, of which there are tons these days. Off the top of my head, I could name for example Hunger Games or Divergence. The Maze Runner is also a good movie. Even though my rating might not suggest it at first glance, I was having really good time watching this film. It is not easy to portray a world so vastly different from ours. But the creators succeeded in doing it and the only issue I had with this movie was its story, which I found irritating but there’s nothing to be done about at. Fortunately, one girl found her way into the gay environment so from the second half this movie has at least some balls.

If you want to see this movie because you saw Brad Pitt’s name in the cast, don’t bother. Brad spends most of his screen time hidden behind a mask because otherwise he’d die. I’m really sorry this wasn’t filmed in a better way because the locations of the old Croatian town were perfect. If only it hadn’t been so boring. But when Brad finally shows up, you might be about to faint because his fresh face is pure perfection. It’s hard to believe that someone could look as good as him in his youth.

This film is by no means a war movie, even though it takes place in a difficult time. However, the West Germans filmed it well, mainly so as not to offend anyone, and so the pretty good premise contains some things that are now quite dated and I found them grating. The best part of the film was the first half and the preparations for the operation, but the second half spoiled everything with some woman and a pseudo-romantic subplot I couldn’t care less about. This was worse than Casablanca.